Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019

INTERNATIONAL

STANDARD

SERIAL

NUMBER

ISSN-2321-7065

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Indexed,Peer Reviewed (Refereed), UGC Approved Journal

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Dr. Merily Roy
Asst. Prof English.

Indira Gandhi Govt Arts & Commerce College.

Vaishali Nagar, Bhilai, C.G, India.
merilyroy@rediffmail.com

Magic realism; The magic wand of Salman Rushdie

Abstract: Salman Rushdie, the magic realist used magic realism as his magic wand to draw
upon a world of his own dream and aspirations. His magic world is a mythical world where
anything can happen; he used magic realism with a purpose. He uses to comment upon the
contemporary world. He used it for social criticism. His magic wand created by the osmosis
of his thought, was a world where miracles come true, where people do not fight in the name
of religion. In his world he creates his own code of morality, his own time schedule and his
own social and political orders. His magic world is the world of supernatural, magicians and
djinns. Rushdie believed that unreal and magical world are far more reliable modes of
storytelling. We find examples of his magic in almost all his novels. The world of reality was
built on prejudices and misconceptions, whereas the magical world was a dream world built
on imaginations, dreams and our hidden aspirations. The magical world was more fascinating
for Rushdie and reality can break a writer’s heart.

Key Words: magical world, supernatural, social criticism, living dead, morality.

“... I buried myself in fairytales. Hatim Tai and Batman,

Superman and Sindbad helped to get me through the

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nearly nine years... I became Aladdin, voyaging in a
fabulous cave; I imagined Ali Baba’s forty thieves hiding
in the dusted urns ; ... I turned into the genie of the lamp,
and thus avoided, for the most part, the terrible notion that
I, alone in the universe, had no idea what I should be, or
how I should behave... (MC, 153).

These are the lines from Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie, where he made the
protagonist Saleem Sinai; fantasize to be in a fairy world, actually being inside the washing
chest. Rushdie, the magician, with his magic wand of magic realism make us travel into a
magical world, which is resided by magicians, jugglers, prophecies, fortune tellers. It is the
world which is unpredicted, unnatural, and unbelievable though fantastic and beautiful.

“Magic” means change brought by confusing tricks. A
magical world is a mythical world where anything can happen. In this magical world of
Rushdie people possess power, which is not seen in normal human beings. It is such a world
where we can see people flying in baskets, and magicians performing surprising feats. These
lines from Midnights Children, shows the magical feats performed by Parvati on Saleem
Sinai.

... Parvati whispered some other word and inside the
basket of invisibility, I Saleem Sinai, complete with my
loose anonymous garments, vanished instantly into air ...
vanished? ...Disappeared; Dematerialized...

Really.. .truly. I was in the basket, but also not in the
basket. (386)

One of the weapons of Rushdie’s magic realism was magic. He used magic in his creations
with a purpose. Magic world is a world of fantasy, which the distinction between reality and

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truth is blurred; it is world away from the hatred and violence. It is world which lies in the
realms of time and timelessness. It is a world of illusion, away from reality as “Realism can
break a writer’s heart? (Shame, 70)

In the world of magic created by the magician Rushdie,
by his wand of magic realism, is actually a world created by the osmosis of his thoughts. It is
a world where people are not known as Christians, Muslims or Hindus.

Rushdie’s magic world is just like the world of painting
of Aurora, where she paints a ‘golden age’, where ‘Jews,
Christians, Muslims, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhist, Jains...
revealed as a glorious butterfly, whose wings were a
miraculous composite of all colors of the world, ( The
Moor’s Last Sigh, 227).

It is the world beyond the realm of hatred and violence.
Rushdie uses magic to make miracles come true. Through his miraculous world, he imagines
a new world where religion does not divide people but unite people. He thus even goes to the
extent of imagining a world, where there is no religion but only religion of truth. He writes: -

There are course no such thing as miracles, but if there
were and so tomorrow we wake up to find no more,
because on earth no more devout Christian, Muslims,
Hindus, Jews... since they wouldn’t be dangerous any
more, the world would become capable of compelling the
belief that leads to truth... (The Ground beneath her Feet,
458).

Rushdie apart from using, magic realism to create a world
of truth and unity uses it for varied purposes. Magic realism is creation of a fantasy world,

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defining the term ‘Magic Realism’ Brenda.k.Marshall writes, “ A text that is called magic
realism is one which disregards the ‘natural’ or physical laws’ which we have to see as
normal” (Teaching the Post Modern, 179). Magic realism creates a fantasy world, which
gives scope to the writer to re-shape the world. It provides the writer an opportunity to
construct his own scheme of morality, his own time structure, his own political and social
order, but in doing so, he doesn’t apparently escape from the contemporary reality. The
purpose of creating a magic world, a miraculous world a fantasy world is to comment upon
the real world to explore the moral, philosophical, social restrictions imposed by it. By the
medium of magic realism Rushdie explores the inner working of the personality, and the
relationship of the individual with those around him. Thus the magic wand of Rushdie makes
us enter into the world where we find familiar made strange and strange made familiar. His
magic wand at times creates a supernatural world. The world of soul and jinn, the world of
souls is beautifully picturized in The Ground Beneath her feet, where Cama is foreshadowed
by his dead twin brother Gaya, whose influence he could feel throughout his life.

Cama, bom of his dead twins shadow, turned out to be
what the ancient called psycho pomp, one concerned with
the retrieval of lost souls, the souls of the beloved dead...
ormus would be still.. .searching the empires of the
unseen, probing the depths of the world... hunting (and
eventually finding) Gaya mart.. .ormus had shadow
selves, the many others who played and came to define
his life. It might not be so fanatical to say that his dead
twin was.. .in the shifting shape of ormus’s monochrome,

protean shade, still alive” (54).

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Thus Rushdie effectively pictures “the shadow world”
which according to him “is evidently a good deal more fascinating than the one most people
inhabit” (imaginary Homelands , 221). Rushdie in picturising the shadow world, the world of
supernatural, actually reveals our deepest fears, our hidden aspirations, wish, hopes, trauma,
weaken, which actually take these forms. “A man has to face great struggle, i.e. struggle
between good/evil, reason/unreason” (Ground Beneath her Feet, 55) and also has to struggle
between past/ present, real /unreal, dead/living, often these struggles leads to osmosis of our
thoughts, which gives a soaring flight to our imagination, and in such imagination we see,
supernatural beings, which are actually a willful creation of our mind. Again proceeding to
Cama’s life being over shadowed by Gaya, Rushdie says that though Cama had temporary
relief from his shadow, but it overshadowed him again after his lover Vina’s death. When
Vina was surrounded by the calamity of earthquake, and when the earth was engulfing her,
the last photograph, revealed an individual with Vina. Though anybody could not recognize
the man with Vina, in her last time, Cama was sure that “Vina’s phantom lover” (447) was no
other than Gayamart, his twin. He says “maybe he died with her, but maybe he’s still out
there” (476). Commenting upon this condition of Cama, Rushdie writes, “he is in
consciousness, that surfaces intermittently between long, damaging hibernations and is no
longer capable of seeing things, as they are beyond his shrouded walls” (476).

It was Abraham (in The Moor’s Last Sigh) who saw his
dead father, in the tiles of the synagogue floor, when he was a child. He saw his father, in
different images, periodically, in a different atmosphere, “just shifting of the scene”, as in a
movie.

His father had appeared.. .in a little blue rowing boat
with blue - skinned foreign looking types by his side,

heading off towards an equally blue horizon...

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Next he saw his father in a cerulean scene of Dionysiac
willow - pattern merry making amid stain dragon and
grumbling violence.

He found his father and wealthy in one tile seated upon
cushion in the position of royal ease and waited upon
eunuchs and dancing girls. A few months later he was
skinny and mendicant. (216).

By the odyssey of Solomon Castile i.e. Abraham’s father,
appearing on the tiles, Rushdie paints the oscillations of the man, wildly throughout the life,
seeking fortune. To seek happiness, he shows man wandering, in search of his destiny and
ultimately, when he uses up all his energy, will power, he is like a “ heavenly body broken
away from the gravity” (76).

“The shifting of scene” from horror, suspense, ghost and
magic, all is beautifully described (in Midnight’s Children) in Saleem’s journey through the
Sunderbans; before making his intentional journey to the magic world of Sunderbans
“Rushdie, gives the reason and need of such a flight, he says”

“To all my needs I should like to make his naked-
breasted admission... I ... finally incapable of continuing
in the submissive performance of ... duty took to heels
and fled... when I hope to immortalize in pickles, as well
as words that condition of the spirit in which the
consequences of the acceptance could not be denied, in
which an overdose of reality gave birth to a miasmic

longing for flight into the safety of dreams...” (360).

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Describing the journey to the sunderbans, by Saleem, now
as a sniffer, and other three of the army, named Ajooba, Saheed and Farooq, Rushdie
beautifully and artistically paints a magical world, just like an expert magician, who can
make happen anything before our eyes, just by moving his magic wand. Thus the “shifting of
images” stars with:

The jungle closed behind like a tomb.. .The place receded
before them like the lantern of a ghost... the mystery of
evening compounded the unreality of the trees, the
sunderbans began to glow in the rain ... mangrove trees
... becoming thicker than elephant trunk.. .mangrove
getting so tall...

They found their bodies covered by three inch long
leeches... colorless... Ajooba woke... in the dark to find
translucent figure of a peasant with a bullet hole in his
heart... leaked a colorless fluid... out of the hold of his
heart.

.. .a monkey with the face of his mother visited Ayooba
night after night.. .at dusk one day... he saw his brother
running wildly through the forest, and became convinced
that his father had died...

.. .translucent serpent bit and poured venom... he saw the
world in mirror- image... the milky abstraction was no
longer in his eyes... at midnight they awoke... to find

themselves being smiled upon by four young girls of

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beauty... the four hours... at last the day come when were
becoming transparent... (367).

They left the “forest of illusion” (367) and were in the
‘mercy of the waves’. They were propelled out of the forest by the ‘unimaginable power ‘of
the tides and waves. The supernatural atmosphere again arises when it was found that the
place had no tidal record.

Similar magical atmosphere is created, when Aurora (The
Moor’s Last Sigh) went with her daughter and husband to Buddhist cave- temples at lonavala.
In the caves, Abraham’s eye blurred and he was about to fall, when an old mushroom- selling
crone, helped him from failing. Aurora, at this moment thought that his illness was probably
due to distress, associated with bringing up the children and wished if she had at least “ one
child- who grew up, really fast”(l 11). A voice whispered behind her, “Obeah Jadoo, to fun”.
Aurora, on turning back, couldn’t see anyone, and she doubted that it must be the mushroom
selling old lady. The supernatural effect is created when Aurora was informed that
mushrooms were never grown or sold in the region of lonavala caves. The magician Rushdie
creates innumerable magical instances in his works, which are laden with supernatural
atmosphere. The supernatural atmosphere is further enhanced by picturising many moments
when the dead make appearance before the living, guiding them, warning them from the forth
coming calamities. At times his characters show as uncommon trend known as “living dead”.
In such cases the characters though may be physically persisting in the world, but as
considered as dead by the society. They at times have to survive, away from the society, in
the realms of nature, all alone, living just l ik e a dead person would do.

His conception of “Living Dead” is though seen in Moor
(The Moor’s Last Sigh ) and Saleem ( Midnight’s Children ), but this accurately designed in the
character of Boonyi Kaul. She had been declared dead, out casted, and made to spend her

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remaining life in the realms of mountainous forest in a Gujjar prophetess hut, for her sin of
betraying her husband, breaking the norms of a married lady.

Rushdie by the character of Pandit Pyarelal, illustrates
and explains the nature of “Mritak” “the living dead”. He puts that “Kal” means yesterday
tomorrow, it is “time”. He puts:

Only the living dead are free of ‘time’, ‘Kal’. The
‘Mritak’ was to live in the world and yet not live in it. To
extinguish the fire burning in the mind and live the holy
life of detachment. The living dead manifests love within
her... bear her sufferings... she controls all her senses
(Shalimar the Clown 226).

Boonyi waited for her death, for the “Kal” to come, when
she will inhale last, for the sin of indulging in “forbidden lust” (Shalimar the Clown 227).
Rushdie always plunges deep in the meaning of the events and wants to message that, reality
world is always painful; there is no escape in the world of reality. “The Forbidden apple”
leads to the fall of man, and “Forbidden lust” lead to the fall of Boonyi. Thus when there is
no escape for our sins in the reality world, man takes refuge in the arms of “shadow world”,
“invisible world “or the magical world.

Rushdie always believed that the unreal and the magical
are far more reliable modes of storytelling. The magic has special position in his fiction, as in
the inner depth of realistic truth lies our inner most desires, fears and anxieties. The magical
world is only the projection of such world. Rushdie’s world is totally magical. The most
appropriate example is the magical qualities possessed by thousands and one child bom in the
midnight hour. These were the children who could walk thorough mirrors, girls who could
multiply fish; they had the power of transforming into wolves and perform magical feats. The

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magical world may be seemed unreal but Rushdie puts in Imaginary Homelands ; ... unreality
is the only weapon with which reality can be smashed, so that it may subsequently be
reconstructed. (122).

The fundamental purpose of Rushdie to web a magical
world was to portray the reality. He used magic as a tool to depict to social criticism. Magic
surrounds almost all his novels. May it be the telepathic power of Saleem, the grotesque of
Sufiya in Shame, the abnormal growth of Moor. While Saleem’s power and journey is used to
socially criticize the Indian scenario, on the other hand the creation of Sufiya is done to
depict the complex socio-political realities of Pakistan. In The Moor’s Last Sigh he uses the
stain of magic to subvert the social realities. Whatever may be the reason, “the writer admits/
confesses that he is a magician, and a magical realist writer” ( profaning the sacred, Randeep
Rana, 155). He is wishfully hopeful that the real life obeys the same laws as his fictional
world, the magical world. The world of reality is built on prejudices, ignorance,
misconceptions and on the other hand the world of magic is built on dreams, secret
aspirations, imagination and desire. Rushdie finds the magic world always more fascinating.
He gets his energy from it as thus he says “.. .1 was heading abracadabra abracadabra into the
heart of a nostalgia which would keep me alive long enough to write these pages... ”

( Midnight’s Children 450).

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Works Cited

Marshall, k Brenda: Teaching of the Postmodern: fiction and theory. Newyork and London:
Rutledge. 1992. Print.

Rana , Randeep. Profaning the Sacred, Salman Rushdie Delhi: S.S publishers. 2005. Print.
Rushdie, Salman: Midnight’s Children , Great Britain: Vintage, 1995. Print

. : Shame, Calcutta; Rupa Paperback, 1983. Print

. : The Moor’s Last Sigh, London: Jonathan Cape, 1995. Print

. : The Ground Beneath Her Feet, London: Jonathan Cape, 1999.

Print.

. : Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991,

London: Granta 1991. Print.